


Sunset Sea

by Serie11



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, First Kiss, Love Confessions, M/M, Pining, Post-Kingdom Hearts II, Pre-Kingdom Hearts Dream Drop Distance, sunsets are def romantic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2019-07-27
Packaged: 2020-07-21 04:43:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19996060
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Serie11/pseuds/Serie11
Summary: Sometimes he feels like all he’s ever done is give ground. Give ground against the darkness. Give ground against Ansem, and DiZ. Sora is the one who stands for what’s right, and it’s easy to stand beside him. It’s always been easy to stand beside Sora, even though Riku doesn’t feel worthy of Sora’s light. He’s far too good for Riku to be around, but for some reason they’re still friends. Best friends, if you listen to Sora for more than five minutes. For some reason, he always brings things back around to Riku, somehow.





	Sunset Sea

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



Riku watches Sora’s necklace glint against the setting sun as he swings forward slightly, grinning at Kairi who’s sitting next to him on the paopu tree. As normal, Riku leans against the base of the trunk, but he’s moved on from his younger days where he’d stand here moodily, arms crossed and looking at nothing but imagined borders that were holding him back. Now, he fiddles with one of his Keychains, and watches Sora.

It’s been a month since they’d come back from the Realm of Darkness, and all of them are still adjusting to life back on the islands. Kairi has it easiest, of course – she was only gone for a few weeks. But most of the people here had thought Riku dead for over a year, and thought the same about Sora after they remembered him. Sometimes, it’s easier to escape people’s staring, and come out to the play island, just the three of them. After the disaster that split this world apart, the people of the main island had somehow known that this place was the centre of it. Not many people come out here anymore, or allow their children to come out here either. It makes the play island a tropical paradise, a retreat that Riku is too often willing to take.

Sometimes he feels like all he’s ever done is give ground. Give ground against the darkness. Give ground against Ansem, and DiZ. Sora is the one who stands for what’s right, and it’s easy to stand beside him. It’s always been easy to stand beside Sora, even though Riku doesn’t feel worthy of Sora’s light. He’s far too good for Riku to be around, but for some reason they’re still friends. Best friends, if you listen to Sora for more than five minutes. For some reason, he always brings things back around to Riku, somehow.

Riku should feel bad about it ( _he does_ ) but he’s too selfish to deprive himself of Sora’s light for too long. So he returns, again and again, a moth to the flame. It’s lucky that Sora is far too kind to burn him – no, Riku does that to himself, standing too close to the other boy, so that people who don’t know them tilt their heads slightly and raise their eyebrows. He knows what they’re thinking – and doesn’t care, not really. As if he’d care about what some person thought about him when he’d likely never see them again. Riku cares about what Sora thinks of him. Everyone else is a side note.

Sora’s necklace glints, a sparkle of light against their gradually dimming backdrop, as he throws back his head and laughs. “And then what?”

Kairi is grinning widely at both of them, hands gesturing wildly as she describes her story. “And Mr Okidara – you know, he runs the fish market stall by the northern docks that specialises in oysters – he looks at me and says, ‘I agree. Young girl, that’s no way to represent our islands. Your father would be ashamed of you.’”

Riku can’t help but let his own lips curl into a smile at Kairi’s rough rendition of the older fisherman.

“So you’re standing there, the King and Donald and Goofy all beside you, and they’re commenting on how you’re not wearing any _makeup_? And that your hair isn’t perfect? And not the very strange looking people that you’re standing with?”

Sora has a way of asking questions that makes Riku’s heart melt. Or maybe that’s just him.

Kairi nods wildly. “Donald must have cast a spell over all of them, to make them disappear or look normal or _something._ Anyway, I got us out of there as fast as I possibly could.” She smiles at the two of them fondly. “I had a feeling that I should come out to the play island, and King Mickey said that I should follow my heart. Almost as soon as we got there, you two were falling from the sky.”

“What an entrance,” Riku says wryly, and Kairi’s cheeks dimple as her grin widens.

“I wouldn’t expect anything else,” she says solemnly, putting her hand over her heart dramatically. She looks back out over the water and sighs quietly. “I should be getting back, though. My dad always wants to have me back before sunset, now. Half the town’s still scared of the dark, so I try to be home by then, to give him the peace of mind.”

“I know how you feel,” Sora commiserates. “My mum starts to panic if I’m not home by dinner. I can’t really blame her, though. Not when everyone’s been through so much.” He sighs. “It’s still so weird – everyone’s grown up while I slept for a year!”

“I always told you that you were going to nap through something important one day,” Riku tells him. “Though I’ll admit, a whole year isn’t exactly what I was expecting.”

Kairi chuckles. “Yeah, you can nap anywhere, Sora. Naminé probably only had to suggest that you go to sleep, and you would have been fine to nap that whole time on your own.”

Sora blushes a tiny bit at their teasing, and Riku can’t drag his eyes away from him, at how cute he is with pink staining his cheeks.

“Anyway,” Kairi says. “I’ll see you guys tomorrow, yeah?”

“For sure!” Sora says cheerfully. Riku just nods at Kairi, who puts a peace sign against her cheek as she walks backwards for a few steps, and then turns to jump down off the boardwalk. Riku remembers daring Sora to do that when they were kids – Sora sprained his ankle and his mother hadn’t let Sora play with Riku for a week. One of the worst weeks in Riku’s life, and he still considers it up there, even after all of the shit that’s gone down since they all left the islands.

Sora leans his head back and lets out a long breath, closing his eyes. Riku forces himself to look back at the dying sunset instead of continuing to stare at him. The sky is more red than orange now, and the main island is a silhouette against the incoming night. Riku lets the ambient darkness of the islands wash over him as it overtakes the light, feeling it nip at him, interacting with his own darkness. This happens in most of the worlds that he’s been in, but there’s something comforting about the darkness of the Destiny Islands. Maybe because unlike everywhere else he’s been, he grew up here. Or maybe it’s because of the parties lit with bonfires, star gazing in the middle of the night, exploring with only the moon to guide him that he remembers from his childhood. He _knows_ this place, down to his bones. Even the darkness here isn’t exempt from that.

“Riku?” Sora asks.

“Yeah?”

Sora doesn’t say anything for a long few seconds, so Riku turns to look at him.

“This world really is quiet, isn’t it?” Sora asks, staring straight ahead at the main island.

“I’ve been to bigger,” Riku admits. “But…”

“But,” Sora says wryly. “It’s home, isn’t it?”

_You’re home,_ Riku wants to say. He’s familiar with the Destiny Islands, yes. He knows every inch of the play island, every street of the main island, and most of the minor islands. But if Sora weren’t here, he doesn’t think he’d be able to stand it. In that long year that he had stood guard over Sora, he hadn’t come back to the Islands – not even to check on Kairi, even though he’d felt guilty about that. Just the thought of being here when Sora wasn’t had been enough to send him into a cold sweat. It just wouldn’t be _right._

“It’s good to be back,” Riku says instead of dumping any of that on Sora. It _is_ good to be back, because that means that Sora is here too.

“Yeah,” Sora agrees, smiling gently. He hops down off the tree and Riku turns to him, always falling into Sora’s gravity. “It is good to be back.” Sora tilts his head slightly, looking up at Riku’s face. It still feels weird to be so much taller than him. Sora reaches up and grabs the edge of his crown necklace, fiddling with the edge of it. Riku must have seen him do that a thousand times. “Hey Riku, do you remember when you gave me this necklace?”

“Of course,” Riku says, lifting an eyebrow. It had been for Sora’s fifth birthday – his parents had bought the necklace, but Riku had picked it out, so he thinks that means it counts as his gift. It’d been too large for Sora then, looking almost comical around his neck, but he’d grown into it. It fits snugly on his chest now, like it was always meant to be there. “You said that it was the best gift you’d ever gotten.”

Sora laughs. “Sure, that’s the thing you remember. I’m pretty sure I said that because I was five at the time, and I didn’t exactly _remember_ any other gifts I’d gotten.”

“You always were a bit scatterbrained,” Riku muses.

Sora just shakes his head. “Anyway,” he stresses. “What I’m trying to say is…” he takes a deep breath. “I still think this is the best gift I’ve ever gotten. Because I still remember that super cute smile you had when you gave it to me.”

Riku looks out over the sea again, but he can still feel himself blushing.

“And…” Sora shifts his weight from foot to foot. “I’ve been meaning to tell you this for a while.” He scratches the back of his neck. “Riku…”

Riku looks back at him. “Yeah? What’s up?”

Sora’s cheeks are still pink from when he’d blushed before. Or maybe he’s blushing again? He takes a step forward, into Riku’s personal space, and Riku holds his breath and doesn’t step backwards. There’s something in Sora’s eyes that keeps him pinned to the spot.

“I’m not really good with words,” Sora mumbles. “Just–”

He leans up, closer, and then grabs the back of Riku’s neck and pulls him down. Riku puts a hand against his chest – to push him away, to pull him closer, he doesn’t know – but just about all his thoughts shut down under the explosion in his head that is _Sora is kissing me._

Riku is still for a few seconds out of sheer surprise, but when Sora goes to pull away he grabs him, drawing him in closer. Sora makes a little happy sound and Riku savours it because there’s no way this can be real. He has to be imagining this, surely – but there’s no way he could have come up with the way that Sora’s tongue licks out a little at his lower lip, tasting. Riku is going to faint. No, he’s going to die, actually. This is how he’s going to go out – heart attack because the boy he’s been pining over his whole life _is actually kissing him._

Sora finally breaks away and Riku sucks in a breath of air like he’s been diving for crabs for too long, desperately holding his breath. No, Sora being so close to him just seems to suck all of the air out of his lungs. He blinks rapidly, looking at Sora before he makes a desperate, questioning noise.

“Heh,” Sora says, putting his hands behind his head. Riku can only just see him in the pale light of the stars – the sun has set, leaving them cast in shadow. Riku wonders if that had made it easier or harder for Sora, to hide in the comforting darkness. Maybe it’s only comforting for Riku. “I guess what I’m trying to say is… I like you, Riku.”

Riku lets out a sound that can in no way be interpreted as a word in any human language. Sora starts to frown slightly, looking at Riku in concern. “Riku? You okay?”

“Fine,” Riku finally manages to gasp. It’s like he’s trying to remember how to talk – surely the kiss hadn’t lasted more than ten, fifteen seconds. Not long enough for Riku to forget how to speak. “Erk – actually, better than fine. I. Um. Like you too, Sora.”

Sora grins at him, all traces of his frown gone. “Yeah, I thought so,” he says. “Though I thought that it might just be because we’ve been friends since forever, you know? Just really good friends. But then I kept thinking about the way that you look at me, and… yeah. You like me.”

Riku feels the heat in his cheeks spread down his neck. He’d always thought that he’d been subtle in his glances… perhaps not.

He clears his throat. “I wasn’t – really expecting that. Could we maybe… try again?”

Sora’s eyes crinkle in happiness, and Riku reaches up dreamily to hook his finger under Sora’s necklace to pull him in close.


End file.
